Previewing the four local by-elections of 21st May 2026

Welcome to another year of Andrew’s Previews, the weekly column which examines the local by-elections that take place up and down Great Britain on nearly every Thursday throughout the year. Each Preview examines the place, the people and the politics of the area to set the context for the poll - because every local by-election is a unique event, and there is no such thing as an average voter or an average part of the UK. Everybody has their biases, everywhere has its quirks, and it’s the job of this column to tease those out and explain why this by-election is subtly or radically different from the national picture.

We have a busy summer coming up. At the last count my list of councillor vacancies had 69 entries on it, plus three upcoming by-elections to the House of Commons. Two of those Parliamentary Specials are among nearly 30 vacancies which are a direct result of the local and devolved elections we had two weeks ago: either because somebody can only do one job at once for legal reasons, or (in the case of three Green Party councillors in London) because they were elected while they were disqualified from being councillors. The massive turnover of seats we saw in this year’s local elections also meant that some people, particularly on the Green Party and Reform UK sides, got elected who really weren’t expecting to win and might not have been prepared to take up their new elected role, and we are seeing a trickle of by-elections coming through for that reason. So there is a lot for subscribers to look forward to.

The timescales involved in organising a poll mean that it will be mid-June before that tidal wave of by-elections hits, and the next four weeks will be quiet with ten by-elections taking place over that period. Four of those are happening today, 21st May 2026, in English districts which didn’t take part in the polls two weeks ago. Let’s start the week on the subject of law and order:

Castle

Lancaster council; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Izzy Metcalf-Riener.

When your columnist last visited Lancaster in the early 2000s, Lancaster Castle was closed. The castle is sometimes referred to locally as John o’Gaunt’s castle, but it dates from earlier than his time: the building goes back to at least the thirteenth century and may well be older than that. It saw action during a Scottish invasion in 1389 and was besieged in the English Civil War. But by the turn of the millennium, its imposing outside walls and firmly closed gate were as much to stop people getting out as getting in.

The castle was still in use as a prison up to 2011, and the prison buildings are still there. The Pentonville-style A wing of the prison (above) now houses the Lancashire Police museum which opens on Thursdays and Fridays, while female prisoners were incarcerated in a rare example of a prison designed on Jeremy Bentham’s “panopticon” principle (below). Here the cells were arranged in a semi-circle, and prisoners could be kept under surveillance at all times by one person in the middle of the semi-circle.

Lancaster Castle was the traditional centre for law and justice for the whole of Lancashire. To this day the castle complex still contains a Crown Court, although it hasn’t been used in anger since 2019 and is scheduled for formal closure later this year. Photography in Crown Court buildings is not allowed, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s an impressive and historic room. Lancaster’s judges had a reputation as hanging judges back in the day, and the court’s dock still contains an iron which was used to brand guilty men as malefactors.

Next to the Court is the even more impressive Shire Hall, a semi-circular Gothic space from 1802 which has also seen use as a courtroom on occasion: perhaps most notoriously, the Shire Hall was the location for the trial of the Birmingham Six in 1975. The walls of the Shire Hall are decorated with the heraldic shields of the Dukes and High Sheriffs of Lancashire going back for six centuries; naturally the shield of Charles III, who as the present Duke of Lancaster ultimately owns the Castle, has pride of place.

The castle is now run as a tourist attraction by the Duchy of Lancaster and the county council. The courtyard and café are open to the public for free, but if you want to see inside the prison cells and the court buildings you’ll have to join a guided tour: these are run several times a day by the county council and they are very reasonably priced. This column strongly recommends a visit, particularly if you like your history on the grisly side.

Lancaster Castle occupies a site which was first fortified by the Romans. The Roman fort, which was larger than the present castle, was erected in the first century AD on a hill overlooking the lowest crossing-point of the River Lune. The Roman fort’s name is lost to history, although one clue is this milestone which was found in a stream at Caton, further up the Lune valley, and which is now on display in a local museum. The inscription is in honour of the emperor Hadrian (AD 127-138) and its final line reads L MP IIII, recording a distance of four Roman miles from “L”.

The fort was rebuilt a number of times and its only surviving section - the Wery Wall, a lump of rubble identified as part of the fort in 1950 - dates from the 4th century. A Roman bathhouse has been excavated not far from the castle and its remains can be seen in the corner of a field. Nearby, in 2023 a group of Lancaster University students on a geophysics training exercise found evidence for what is thought to be a Romano-Celtic temple.

Lancaster Castle lies on the western edge of the city centre, whose area forms Castle ward. Lancaster was once a port, and there are still some fine Georgian buildings at St George’s Quay on the riverside which date from that era. The old custom house is now home to the Lancaster Maritime Museum.

In more recent years the city’s economy has been supported by Lancaster University, a plate-glass 1960s institution. The university has its own dedicated campus on the southern edge of the city, which forms its own electoral ward and which this column has described on a number of occasions, but several of the University’s departments and many of its students are based in the city centre. The University even have a presence inside the Castle now, with a seminar room being established there in this decade.

In the 2021 census Castle ward, which then had slightly different boundaries, made the top 60 wards in England and Wales for the 18-29 age bracket (46.4%) and for those with A-level or equivalent qualifications but not (yet) further (35.3%); 43% of its adults were full-time students, and 22% worked in the education sector. Students travelling to Lancaster will often arrive or pass through here: the city’s intercity railway station, on the West Coast main line, lies within the Castle ward boundary and was once known as Lancaster Castle.

This youthful demographic leads to left-wing politics. But Lancaster council isn’t just the city proper: it also takes in the faded seaside resort of Morecambe, the ferry port of Heysham, the small railway town of Carnforth and a large rural hinterland, resulting in the council being more or less permanently hung. The 2023 Lancaster elections returned 24 Labour councillors, 21 Greens, 7 Lib Dems, 5 Conservatives, 3 Morecambe Bay Independents and 1 other independent; in a July 2024 by-election, which despite being on the undercard of the general election had one of the most appalling turnouts this column has ever seen, the Greens gained a seat in University ward from Labour. Lancaster is a district which tends to generate a lot of council by-elections and control of the council seems to change just as frequently: the current administration is a coalition of Green Party, Lib Dem and Morecambe Bay Independent councillors.

This ward is part of the Lancaster and Wyre parliamentary seat, which was recreated for the 2024 election and returned Labour MP Cat Smith for her fourth term of office. Smith had represented the predecessor seat of Lancaster and Fleetwood since 2015, and she increased her majority in 2024 despite unfavourable boundary changes. She is now chair of the Commons Procedure select committee.

In the 2025 Lancashire county elections, the three divisions which cover Lancaster city proper all returned Green Party county councillors. Castle ward is mostly within Lancaster East division which was a Green gain from Labour, but its western fringes (including the castle) are part of the misnamed Lancaster Central division which does not in fact contain the city centre. Lancaster Central division has been in Green Party hands for many years.

Castle ward was established on its present boundaries in 2023 and it easily returned the Green Party slate, which defeated Labour by 59-29. One of the Green councillors resigned within a few months and a by-election was held in March 2024, in which Izzy Metcalf-Riener increased the Green majority over Labour to 65-26. All four candidates in that by-election were Lancaster University students, and Metcalf-Riener has now completed her studies and moved away from the city for work.

Defending the second Castle ward by-election of this council term for the Green Party is Will Farley, who works as a chef at a city centre restaurant. Labour have selected William Evans, who is reading for an economics degree at Lancaster and was an unsuccessful candidate for Wokingham council in 2024 before he started his university studies. Also on an all-male ballot are Malcolm Martin for the Lib Dems and Marco Wright for Reform UK; unusually, there is no Conservative candidate here.

Parliamentary constituency: Lancaster and Wyre
Lancashire county council division: Lancaster East (most), Lancaster Central (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Lancaster and Morecambe
Postcode districts: LA1, LA2

William Evans (Lab)
Will Farley (Grn)
Malcolm Martin (LD)
Marco Wright (RUK)

March 2024 by-election Grn 524 Lab 212 C 43 LD 27
May 2023 result Grn 767/711/657 Lab 383/362/320 C 93/82/75 LD 66
Previous results in detail

Kirkham

Fylde council, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Damian Buckley.

Many of the same themes which we saw in Lancaster emerge with our second Lancashire by-election, which is in the middle of the Fylde. Kirkham is possibly the oldest settlement on the Fylde peninsula: there was a Roman fort here on the top of Carr Hill, which is now covered by modern development. The town received its market charter from Henry III in the 13th century, and textiles was the main industry here in recent centuries. In 1840 the railways came here with the opening of Kirkham and Wesham station, through which all trains to and from Blackpool pass: over one 24-hour period at the height of the holiday season in July 1936, the signalbox at Kirkham North Junction handled a massive 656 train movements.

The present Kirkham ward was created in 2023 as a merger of two previous wards called Kirkham North and Kirkham South. In the 2021 census Kirkham South made the top 20 wards in England and Wales for the “economically inactive: other” category, which is due to the presence of HMP Kirkham. This is a low-security men’s prison, located to the south of the town on a former RAF base, which can house up to 700 offenders who can reasonably be trusted in open conditions.

The local authority is Fylde council, which has the distinction of being one of just two local government districts in the north of England which have Conservative majorities. Fylde council currently has 21 Conservative councillors against 11 independents, 2 Labour, 2 Lib Dems and this vacancy. The vote distribution here is rather unusual, because this is not a case of Conservative rural areas outvoting urban independent councillors: in Fylde district the independent councillors tend to be elected from the rural wards, while the Conservative vote is strongest in the district’s main town of Lytham St Annes. Kirkham ward counts as rural for this purpose, and it voted strongly for an independent slate in 2023: topline vote shares on that occasion were 53% for independent candidates, 27% for the Conservatives and 20% for Labour.

Elections here at other levels of government have tended towards right-wing candidates. Kirkham is part of the Fylde parliamentary seat which has been in Conservative hands since its re-creation in 1983: the current incumbent is Andrew Snowden, who won his first term of office in July 2024 and had previously been the Lancashire police and crime commissioner from 2021 to May 2024. The Fylde East division of Lancashire county council voted for an independent county councillor in 2017, for the Conservatives in 2021 and then for Reform UK in 2025. The most recent poll here was a town council by-election in Kirkham South ward two weeks ago, which was won by the Conservatives.

This by-election will result in a change in council composition, because it is to replace independent councillor Damian Buckley and no new independent candidate has come forward. The Conservatives have selected Kirkham town councillor Adam Brierley who is the only candidate to give an address in the town. The Labour candidate is Oliver Mills, whose address is some distance to the west in Little Plumpton. And two new parties have entered the fray: Philip Morgan stands for the Lib Dems, while Reform UK’s Joshua Roberts is already the local county councillor and is now hoping to double up at district level as well. They complete another all-male ballot paper.

Parliamentary constituency: Fylde
Lancashire county council division: Fylde East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackpool (most of ward), Preston (eastern and southern parts)
Postcode district: PR4

Adam Brierley (C)
Oliver Mills (Lab)
Philip Morgan (LD)
Joshua Roberts (RUK)

May 2023 result Ind 1006/1005/817 C 507/373/302 Lab 387
Previous results in detail

Alfrick, Leigh and Rushwick

Malvern Hills council, Worcestershire; caused by the resignation of Malvern Hills Independent councillor Peter Whatley.

The last council by-election before the May 2026 local elections took place in the Malvern Hills district of Worcestershire, and we are back there now for one of the first by-elections of the 2026-27 municipal year. The Alfrick, Leigh and Rushwick ward covers six parishes which run from the Malvern Hills themselves all the way down to the edge of Worcester. Here we find Rushwick parish, which is growing strongly in population thanks to Worcester overspill development and is now the largest of the three elements of this ward. In second place is Leigh Sinton, a village on the main road between Worcester and Hereford, while Alfrick is a tiny settlement in the hills but gets top billing in the ward name thanks to that quirky thing called the alphabet.

Recent election results in this area tell a number of different stories. In 2024 the West Worcestershire constituency re-elected its Conservative MP Dame Harriett Baldwin for her fifth term of office. She is now a shadow business minister, having spent much of the last Parliament chairing the Treasury select committee.

The most recent poll here was the 2025 Worcestershire county council election, in which this ward is part of Malvern Link division: that was a Lib Dem gain from the Conservatives last year, although boundary changes confuse the issue a bit. Reform UK are the largest party on Worcestershire county council, but they finished short of a majority and this led to some rather dramatic scenes at the county council AGM last week. Alan Amos, who was a right-wing Conservative MP for Hexham from 1987 to 1992 and has had a long and winding political career since (he was a Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets at one point), had recently taken over the leadership of the Reform UK group and was expecting to be ratified as the new the leader of the county council; but that didn’t happen. Instead the council’s Conservative, Green and Lib Dem groups banded together with independent councillors to outvote Reform UK and install a Green Party leader: this then led to the national Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch throwing her toys out of the pram and suspending the Conservative group leader for working with the Greens. Quite what happens next is not clear.

When Malvern Hills council last went to the polls in 2023, Alfrick, Leigh and Rushwick ward went in a different direction again by re-electing Sarah Rouse and Peter Whatley, who had previously been independent councillors for the former Alfrick and Leigh ward. Rouse and Whatley were elected on the ticket of the Malvern Hills Independents, which won a total of three seats on the council: the other was in Tenbury ward, which we visited three weeks ago. The result in this ward was not close, with topline figures of 66% for the Malvern Hills Independents and 19% for the Conservatives.

Malvern Hills is one of those councils where no group has anywhere near the 16 seats needed for a majority. The largest group is made up of 7 Green Party and three allied independent councillors for a total of 10, the Democratic Independent group has 8 including the council leader, the Conservatives have 6, the Lib Dems have 3, the Malvern Hills Independents have 2 seats plus this vacancy, and Reform UK have recently won their first seat on this council via the Tenbury by-election. The council is currently run on an all-party basis, which might well not have been to the taste of the outgoing councillor and resources portfolio holder Peter Whatley: his resignation statement labelled the council as “unproductive”.

Whatley’s resignation will lead to a change in the political balance on Malvern Hills council, as there is no defending Malvern Hills Independent candidate. There are two independent candidates, though: Tom Clarke is the vice-chair of Alfrick and Lulsley parish council and runs a pub in Lulsley, while Matt Oliver stood in a neighbouring ward in 2023 without success and gives an address in Leigh Sinton. The Conservative candidate Seb Barbour is the deputy chairman (political) of the party’s West Worcestershire branch, and in 2023 he stood in the neighbouring Powick and the Hanleys ward. The Lib Dems finished last here in 2023 but may be taking this by-election more seriously by selecting the local county councillor Chris McSweeny; and yet another all-male ballot paper is completed by the Green Party’s Charlie Anderton and Reform UK’s Max Windsor-Peplow, who stood in the 2024 general election in Monmouthshire but whose previous local election contests have all been in Worcester or Malvern Hills. Counting for this by-election will start at 10am on Friday.

Parliamentary constituency: West Worcestershire
Worcestershire county council division: Malvern Link
ONS Travel to Work Area: Worcester and Kidderminster
Postcode districts: WR2, WR6, WR13

Charlie Anderton (Grn)
Seb Barbour (C)
Tom Clarke (Ind)
Chris McSweeny (LD)
Matt Oliver (Ind)
Max Windsor-Peplow (RUK)

May 2023 result Malvern Hills Ind 1030/992 C 300 LD 239
Previous results in detail

Bridport

Dorset council; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Dave Bolwell.

For our final poll today we are on the south coast, in the rather isolated Dorset town of Bridport. This was important enough in Saxon times to have its own mint, and Bridport is still important enough locally to be recognised by the ONS as the centre of its own Travel to Work Area. Bridport’s traditional industry is ropemaking, and the town’s unusually wide main street - where the ropes were dried - is a legacy of that. For some of the 16th century the town had a monopoly on making ropes for the Royal Navy.

Rope and nets are still made in Bridport today, and other industries include brewing and valves together with tourism and services for the local area. One of those services, butchers R J Balson and Son, is recognised by the Institute for Family Business as the UK’s oldest continuously-trading family business, with a line of 25 generations of butchers going back to 1515. The town itself is some distance inland but the Bridport parish extends south to the fishing port of West Bay on the Jurassic coast; the Bridport electoral ward also takes in the parish of Symondsbury to the west of the town.

Bridport was one of the ancient boroughs which were entitled to return two MPs to the unreformed House of Commons, and its electorate was unusually large for the period because the right to vote was vested in inhabitants paying the local tax of scot and lot. The electors here were in nobody’s pocket and they expected candidates to pay a decent price for their votes. The town was eventually disenfranchised by the Third Reform in 1885, and ever since then Bridport has been part of the West Dorset constituency. This seat remained in Conservative hands continuously from 1885 until 2024, when it was gained by Liberal Democrat candidate Edward Morello: he is described by the party as an environmentalist who lives in Bridport and who worked in renewable energy investment before entering elected politics.

This result came after the Liberal Democrats had narrowly gained overall control of Dorset council in May 2024: that election returned 42 Lib Dems against 30 Conservatives, 4 Greens, 3 “Independents for Dorset”, 2 Labour and 1 independent. There are currently two vacant seats following the deaths of Lib Dem and Conservative councillors. If the Lib Dems hold this by-election their council majority will be secure; but if the Lib Dems lose here, then control of Dorset council would come down to a future by-election in St Leonards and St Ives ward which was safely Conservative in 2024. No date has yet been set for that poll.

And Bridport is not a safe ward. In 2019, at the first election on these boundaries, Bridport’s three seats split two to the Lib Dems and one to the Green Party. The Lib Dems got a monopoly in 2024, but their third candidate won the final seat only 25 votes ahead of the outgoing Green councillor: topline vote shares were 35% for the Liberal Democrats, 32% for the Green Party and 17% for the Conservatives. Dorset is still on a transitional electoral cycle arising from the 2019 reorganisation here, and the next Dorset council elections are not due until 2029.

This by-election is to replace Dave Bolwell following his death in March at the age of 70. Bolwell had been a Dorset councillor since 2019 and he was mayor of Bridport in 2023-24. Before moving to the town, he had been a councillor in West Wiltshire where he represented Bradford-on-Avon North ward from 2007 until that council’s abolition in 2009. His widow Bridget is one of Bridport’s two remaining councillors.

Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Bridport town councillor Paddy Mooney, who stood in Lyme and Charmouth ward at the last Dorset elections in 2024. The Green Party’s Kelvin Clayton, who lost his seat here in 2024, wants it back: Clayton is a retired fireman who also sits on the town council. The Conservatives have selected Una Christopher, who is the only woman out of the 18 candidates on this week’s four ballot papers: Christopher was an unsuccessful candidate here in 2019 and 2024. And Reform UK have entered the fray with Jason Holt, a veteran of 24 years in the Army who now works as a schoolteacher. The votes cast in this by-election will be counted from 10am on Friday.

Parliamentary constituency: West Dorset
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bridport
Postcode districts: DT6, DT7

Una Christopher (C)
Kelvin Clayton (Grn)
Jason Holt (RUK)
Paddy Mooney (LD)

May 2024 result LD 1726/1646/1587 Grn 1562/1166/880 C 832/754/747 Lab 760
May 2019 result LD 1891/1489/893 Grn 1606 C 1172/1138/1040 Lab 773/734/630 UKIP 643
Previous results in detail

If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them - going back to 2016 - in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by becoming a paid subscriber to this blog - which will also you get you early access to the Previews.

Andrew Teale